{"id":4827,"date":"2025-03-21T14:43:24","date_gmt":"2025-03-21T14:43:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/judge-brings-key-legal-claims-back-into-play\/"},"modified":"2025-03-21T14:43:24","modified_gmt":"2025-03-21T14:43:24","slug":"judge-brings-key-legal-claims-back-into-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/judge-brings-key-legal-claims-back-into-play\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge Brings Key Legal Claims Back Into Play"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tA<\/span> federal judge is shaking up Limp Bizkit\u2019s $200 million lawsuit against Universal Music Group (UMG), issuing a procedural ruling that sends much of the contentious legal battle to state court but allows copyright claims to move ahead toward trial.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a decision issued Tuesday (March 19), Judge Percy Anderson<\/strong> said he would decline to exercise jurisdiction over the majority of the lawsuit\u2019s accusations against UMG, including its core claim that the band is entitled to a ruling of \u201crescission\u201d that voids its deals with the label and allows it to take back copyrights to its music.<\/p>\n

\n\tCiting concerns about \u201ceconomy, convenience [and] fairness,\u201d the judge ruled that those claims must instead be handled by state courts in New York or California. But he denied UMG\u2019s motion to dismiss the band\u2019s claim of copyright infringement, allowing those claims to proceed in his court.<\/p>\n

\n\tThough hardly a slam dunk, the ruling is a positive development for Limp Bizkit. In an earlier ruling, Judge Anderson had outright rejected the rescission claim \u2014 a holding that also meant the band couldn\u2019t sue the label for copyright infringement. In the new decision, the judge left the question of rescission open for a future ruling by a state court, meaning that claim \u2014 and the lucrative copyright claims \u2014 are back in play.<\/p>\n

\n\tThough the copyright claims will now move forward in his court, the judge has repeatedly stressed that those allegations can only succeed if the band\u2019s contracts with UMG are rescinded and it regains its ownership of the copyrights. The judge could potentially pause the case while the rescission issue is litigated in state court, but he gave no indication that he would do so in Tuesday\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n

\n\tFrontman Fred Durst and Limp Bizkit sued in October, claiming the band had \u201cnever received any royalties from UMG\u201d despite its huge success over the years: \u201cThe band had still not been paid a single cent by UMG in any royalties until taking action.\u201d The band argued that the damages total owed by UMG would \u201ceasily surpass $200 million\u201d when the case was over.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut in January, Judge Anderson sided with UMG on the core question of rescission. He ruled that the band had in fact been \u201cpaid millions in advances\u201d and that UMG had fronted \u201csubstantial sums\u201d to record and distribute Limp Bizkit\u2019s albums \u2014 meaning the band didn\u2019t deserve the drastic remedy of terminating the decades-old deals in their entirety.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cPlaintiffs seek rescission of contracts that have governed the parties\u2019 relationship beginning in 1996 \u2014 nearly 30 years \u2014 because the agreements should be rescinded as fraudulently induced,\u201d the judge wrote. \u201cPlaintiffs have not plausibly alleged the type of \u2018substantial\u2019 or \u2018total failure\u2019 in the performance of the contracts that could support rescission of the parties\u2019 agreements.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFollowing that ruling, Limp Bizkit responded by filing an updated version of the lawsuit. In it, the band added new factual allegations to support their demand for rescission, including that its former manager had fraudulently induced them to sign agreements, engaging in \u201cwrongful self-dealing\u201d while the band was \u201cpaid nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn Tuesday\u2019s decision, Judge Anderson said those new allegations would require the kind of detailed analysis of novel state-law issues that a state-level court was better suited to address.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe rescission claims, on which the copyright claims depend, \u2026 require an analysis of state law of both New York and California law involving facts and law that are distinct from those necessary to adjudicate the copyright claim,\u201d the judge wrote. \u201cPlaintiffs\u2019 effort to rescind the agreements as a result of the alleged fraud committed by their former business manager appears to also raise complex and novel theories for which there is limited controlling legal precedent.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A federal judge is shaking up Limp Bizkit\u2019s $200 million lawsuit against Universal Music Group (UMG), issuing a procedural ruling that sends much of the contentious legal battle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4828,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[463,300,423,1719,136,1701],"class_list":["post-4827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-brings","tag-claims","tag-judge","tag-key","tag-legal","tag-play"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}